Potential evapotranspiration (ET0)is of great significance for water resources assessment and climate change.Based on daily meteorological data of 19 weather stations in Zoige Wetland and its surrounding area from 1960 to 2015,ET0 was calculated by the radiation-calibrated Penman-Monteith model.The temporal-spatial change characteristics of ET0 were analyzed by cumulative departure,Mann-Kendall test, Pettitt test,Theil-Sen slope estimator and Hurst index,while the influencing factors of ET0 were investigated by principal component analysis.The results showed that:(1)the average of annual ET0 was 625.3 mm with a significant increasing trend of 4.89 mm/10 a(p<0.01);The ET0 of four seasons decreased in the sequence:summer>spring>autumn>winter;the annual,autumn and winter ET0 showed a significant abrupt point in 1968(p<0.01),1997(p<0.01)and 2003(p<0.1),respectively,while there was no mutation in spring and summer ET0;(2)the average annual ET0 was high in the southern and eastern edges and low along the northwest-southeast line with the changing rate decreasing from northeast to southwest,while ET0 of the northern area to Banma and the region between Maerkang and Heishui showed a slowly decreasing trend;(3)the Hurst index of ET0 ranged from 0.56 to 0.91,which mainly distributed high around the circum and low in the middle;the future change trend of ET0 for the entire region is mainly towards a persistent increase and this area accounts for 96.88% of the total;(4)the dominant reason for ET0 increase was temperature increase,followed by sunshine duration increase and relative humidity decrease.The reduction of ET0 caused by decrease of net radiation,wind speed and precipitation is offset by other factors.